Spend time with adults? Is he crazy?

I think adults who write about children have bad memories.  63 years ago I didn’t have any of these qualities when I entered college.  And based on what I read on Facebook and other blogs, many of my contemporaries have not learned along the way.  Basic math?  Still struggling with that.

“What do [entering college students] need?  Academically, they need to be able to read analytically and write clear literate prose. They need to be able to recognize an argument and formulate one of their own.  They need to be able to analyze and apply ideas from one source to a problem in another, think logically, and do basic mathematics.  These are all valuable, but two other things are actually more important.

The first is that a student must “have the lights on.”  They have to care.  If education is seen as something they “get through” to get a largely meaningless credential – their “entry slip” to enter the corporate rat race rather than as a place to develop needed skills and wisdom – then they cannot and will not get an education.

The second thing a prospective student needs is maturity.  Another way of putting this would be to say, they need to grow up: become dependable adults who take responsibility for themselves and for the common good of the community of which they are members.

How does that happen?  One answer is they need to develop the virtues: wisdom, justice, temperance, and courage.  How can they develop these virtues they so desperately need?

Answer:  Adolescents need to spend time with adults if they are ever going to learn to be adult.  They need the experience of working with and for other people. They need to work within a group in which their well-being depends upon others doing their jobs well and in which the well-being of others depends upon them doing their jobs well.  They need to mature by training in a craft in which excellence is demanded and expected.”

https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2020/01/11/college-when/

Randal Smith is the Scanlan Professor of Theology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston.

The benefits of acne

This sounds like a bad joke, but when you think about it, it sort of makes sense. . . Acne as a teen predicts success.

"We use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health to investigate the association between having acne in middle to high school and subsequent educational and labor market outcomes. We find that having acne is strongly positively associated with overall grade point average in high school, grades in high school English, history, math, and science, and the completion of a college degree. We also find evidence that acne is associated with higher personal labor market earnings for women. We further explore a possible channel through which acne may affect education and earnings."

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/701436

The crazies in our culture

The Left is schizo and psychotic. What they are doing to children while screaming about priest sexual abuse (which is far less than that from teachers) and #MeToo is just bizarro.

• They offer underage children abortions then give them birth control;
• they promote surgery on genitals under the guise of "gender confusion";
• they pump children full of hormones to delay puberty which will damage them for the rest of their lives;
• they allow young girls to be intimidated and bullied by boys in their own bathrooms, locker rooms and athletic events;
• then they punish them if they use the correct pronoun.
• This is a political agenda. In Columbus it was being promoted on a local "news" show a few nights ago, as a medical and human interest story because a 3 year old thought he was a girl.

People. You've lost your minds.

And they call this "progressive?"

Are poor pregnant women paid to be in clinical trials for abortion procedures?

“We propose a randomized controlled non-inferiority trial of women undergoing first trimester surgical abortion to compare pain with dilation after receiving a PCB 20/4/3 versus a PCB with fewer injection sites and with no delay. The primary outcome is pain with cervical dilation. Secondary outcomes include pain at additional time points before, during, and after the procedure; satisfaction; side effects; and need for additional intraoperative and postoperative pain medication.” Paula Bednarek, Oregon Health and Science University, 2011

“In this study we would compare mifepristone and misoprostol use to osmotic dilator use, as both are administered the day before. Mifepristone would be given 24 hours prior to abortion, and misoprostol 400 mcg would be administered buccally 2 hours prior to abortion. Osmotic dilators are the method currently used in our institution, and are placed 24 hours prior to abortion.

The primary outcome will be the length of the procedure. Secondary outcomes will include amount of dilation achieved, ease of procedure, patient assessment of discomfort after mifepristone or dilators, discomfort during the abortion procedure, acceptability to patients, and acceptability to staff.” Lynn Borgatta, Boston Medical Center, 2011

Depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA) is a progestin-only, hormonal contraceptive that is extremely effective and very appealing for the adolescent contraceptive user. But it causes weight gain and bone loss, so here in Columbus at Children's Hospital they are enrolling girls as young as 12 in research to try to make it less objectionable and less risky for young girls. Researcher is Andrea Bonny, 2011

“Building a career in abortion research to fight restrictive access in the US” is a research topic for Amanda Dennis which has provided her with $82,000 in grant money. She doesn’t seem to be a doctor--maybe she’s a librarian--but works for Ibis Reproductive Health, an abortion grinder non-profit, and is getting money to explain “how it did it good” after the fact. 2011

All these examples from grant descriptions of Society of Family Planning, and are only a selection of the 2011 grants. There are many others. I wonder who or what funds this death vehicle?

The hypocrisy over the Penn State sex scandal

Am I the only one who recognizes the hypocrisy going on with the cya at Penn State? There is a national organization, "North American Man Boy Love," Nambla or some such name, which grooms young boys to be lovers of gay men. They have their own news bulletin and wiki. They are all over the internet and no one shuts them down or arrests them that I've heard of. These gay men influence legislation to lower the age of consent and to have their lifestyle accepted with other gay rights issues which involve consenting adults. I have come across a corresponding radical lesbian organization that sponsors camps for underage teen-age girls to help them "discover" their sexuality, but I think that's less common. Nambla doesn't consider sex with a teen-ager as pedophilia. Some advocates don't think sex with non-teen boys is abuse. You can google it, but it's a good way to pick up a virus, a hacker, or nasty e-mails. By even suggesting that they are perverts, I'll have nasty comments I'll have to monitor and remove.

Also, today I was reading a summary of a research article in JAMA that used 600 boys/young men ages 12-24 in 8 cities and their STDs and drug use with older gay men. Not a word about reporting the perps, and this was governmentt sponsored research. Are abused boys OK if it's for research?

4645

Cite your sources!

There's a full page ad in the paper today from the State of New York Commissioner of Health addressed to Disney, GE, News Corp., Sony, Time Warner and Viacom.

"The science is clear: exposure to smoking in movies is the single most powerful pro-tobacco influence on children today, accounting for the recruitment of half of all new adolescent smokers."

No one is more anti-tobacco than I am, but for statements like that, I'd like to see some sources. It sounds like big government trying to push aside the influence of parenting, church, school, social network, and the non-Hollywood arts industry. I went on-line and looked at various studies (CDC, BMJ) read through the summaries, then the corrections, then the citations where authors were often citing themselves (bad form), and I even came across one that said that although incidence of smoking in movies was going down, smoking was going up! And yet the letter claims,

"Tobacco imagery delivers nearly 200,000 U.S. adolescents into tobacco addition each year."

I think, if I read correctly, that for a certain percentage of young teens who try smoking, many have seen a movie in the past year where actors were smoking. I don't know how many who try smoking after seeing an R movie (and where are their parents?) have also been taken to concerts, art museums, plays, library story hours, school lyceums, sporting events and school parties. Do they want to buy a hockey stick or a box of watercolors? I hope they've adjusted for other influences. I suspect that the first cigarette needs to be reinforced by some other type of influence--either genetic predisposition, family members who smoke, or peer acceptance or all three. My son, who is trying to stop his 20+ year addiction, says he was hooked after the first cigarette because he liked how it made him feel. Then smoking behavior was reinforced at school, which at that time allowed it on campus. I tried smoking in junior high, and again in college. It didn't do a thing for me, tasted awful and made my clothes and hair stink, plus I had disapproval from friends, so what would be the point? Smoking was probably in every movie I'd ever seen in the 1950s and 60s and when I was in high school, I saw several movies a week. And they really made it look glamorous and fun in those days. Obesity is passing tobacco as a health problem. Especially in childhood. Next: no movies showing restaurants, eating or snacking. No previews announcing food in the lobby. No popcorn allowed.

So guys, if the science is clear, make your citations clear also.

3579

Have schools gone off the deep end on being "safe?"

Glenn Beck interviewed a father, Frank Harmeier, last week whose ten year old son Casey pulled a fire alarm cover off in the hall of the school (Texas) on a dare. When the cover was replaced, the alarm went off. It wasn't one that goes off at the police station, or even the principal's office, but is local for that area so a teacher can be summoned to investigate. When the teacher came (he didn't try to run away--he knew he'd done something wrong), he admitted his crime. Then the police were called, he was arrested and taken to the police station and interrogated for four hours before his parents were called. They are charging him with a felony; the parents are calling it child abuse. And as it turned out, the alarm went off because a school staffer pulled it when she tried to replace the cover. For its mistake, the school hasn't apologized for terrorizing a student, and has only asked that the felony charge be reduced to a misdemeanor. The juvenile authorities, according to Casey's father, wanted the parents to go through a family counseling and parent reeducation (North Vietnam comes to mind, doesn't it), the problem is they ARE counselors, she having given up her job to be a stay at home mom. And the father works in that school district. Series in the Houston Chronicle.

Imagine all this fuss and police involvement with illegals flooding across the border of Texas. Seems like some misplaced power struggles, doesn't it. The reporter following this story has discovered that gum chewing will also result in arrests.

Then in Oregon, "Two McMinnville middle school boys are in Yamhill County Juvenile Detention facing sex abuse charges after school officials said they inappropriately touched classmates.

The 12- and 13-year-old boys’ parents said students were part of a group of boys and girls at Patton Middle School who would spank each other’s backsides as part of a handshake or dance." Story here. Again, the children were arrested and the parents weren't called. What is this, the abortion trend in parent notification?

Kind of makes me glad we're going to our 50th class reunions this summer--you young folks in charge of our institutions are going bonkers. I hate to think what my generation would have been charged with. Eleven year old boys actually thought it was great fun to sneak up behind the girls and snap their bra! Now we've got libraries with really smutty stuff and fighting internet filters while insisting it's about about freedom of information, while 10 year olds are going to jail? The world is upside down.

3443 Virginity pledges vs. condom use in adolescents

Why do you suppose some groups, the media especially, are so opposed to teens being instructed that abstinence is a viable alternative in sex education? Never mind, just tuck that thought away for another day and move one to things we do know. Studies do show that parents are in favor of abstinence education. What got the most media attention hype was a report [Peter Bearman and Hanna Bruckner in the Journal of Adolescent Health, April 2005] that apparently showed virginity pledges made no statistically significant difference in STDs in young adulthood. Upon rechecking their methods that was found not to be the case because their methods also showed that condom use failed even more in making a difference in STDs among this sample, and they were not looking at the teen years, but 7 years after the fact. A study done in June 2005 showed the Bearman and Bruckner study had many design flaws, plus the media had ignored many of the statistically significant differences, like male pledgers had 30% lower rate of infection than non-pledgers. I only bring it up now because recently I heard this misinformation mentioned on a talk show.

Lower STD rates [25%] is just one among a broad array of positive outcomes associated with virginity pledging. Previous research has shown that, when compared to non-pledgers of similar backgrounds, individuals who have taken a virginity pledge are:

Less likely to have children out-of-wedlock;
Less likely to experience teen pregnancy;
Less likely to give birth as teens or young adults;
Less likely to have sex before age 18; and,
Less likely to engage in non-marital sex as young adults.
In addition, pledgers have far fewer life-time sexual partners than non-pledgers. There are no apparent negatives associated with virginity pledging: while pledgers are less likely to use contraception at initial intercourse, differences in contraceptive use quickly disappear. By young adult years, sexually active pledgers are as likely to use contraception as non-pledgers.

Read it here, "Adolescent Virginity Pledges, Condom Use, and Sexually Transmitted Diseases Among Young Adults" by Robert Rector and Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D., June, 2005.

Although the groups compared did have similar backgrounds, it appeared to me that more non-pledgers were from divorced homes with higher incomes and less religious involvement than the virginity pledge youth. However, whether the differences were statistically signficant enough to satisfy social scientists, I don't know.

And as we all know from life, making a promise doesn't mean keeping a promise.

Here's a good discussion opener for you and your daughter.

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